Thursday, July 21, 2016

Americans
viewing the recent failed coup attempt in Turkey as some exotic foreign
news story -- the latest, violent yet hardly unusual political
development to occur in a region constantly beset by turmoil -- should
pause to consider that the prospect of similar instability would not be
unfathomable in this country if Donald Trump were to win the presidency.

Trump
is the most brazenly authoritarian figure to secure the nomination of a
major American political party. He expresses his support for all manner
of strongmen, and his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has actually
worked for one: former Ukrainian president and Vladimir Putin ally
Viktor Yanukovich. At the Republican National Convention here Monday,
Manafort put some of the tricks he learned overseas as a dictator
whisperer to good use, employing underhanded tactics to avoid a roll
call vote on the convention’s rules package and quietly removing
language from the party platform expressing support for Ukraine’s
democratic aspirations.

Throughout the campaign, Trump has
repeatedly bragged about ordering soldiers to commit war crimes, and has
dismissed the possibility that he would face any resistance. “They
won’t refuse,” he told Fox News’ Bret Baierearlier this year. “They’re
not gonna refuse me. Believe me.” When Baier insisted that such orders
are “illegal,” Trump replied, “I’m a leader. I’ve always been a leader.
I’ve never had any problem leading people. If I say do it, they’re going
to do it.”

Oh really? Blimpish swagger might fly within the
patriarchal confines of a family business, a criminal operation (the
distinction is sometimes blurred) or a dictatorship. It does not,
however, work in a liberal democracy, legally grounded by a written
constitution, each branch restrained by separation of powers.

Try
to imagine, then, a situation in which Trump commanded our military to
do something stupid, illegal or irrational. Something so dangerous that
it put the lives of Americans and the security of the country at stake.
(Trump’s former rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Marco
Rubio, said the United States could not trust “the nuclear codes” to an
“erratic individual.”) Faced with opposition from his military brass,
Trump would perhaps reconsider and back down. But what if he didn’t?

In
that case, our military men and women, who swear to uphold the
Constitution and a civilian chain of command, would be forced to choose
between obeying the law and serving the wishes of someone who has
explicitly expressed his utter lack of respect for it.

They might well choose the former.

“I
would be incredibly concerned if a President Trump governed in a way
that was consistent with the language that candidate Trump expressed
during the campaign,” retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who served
as head of the CIA and the National Security Agency under President
George W. Bush, said in response to Trump’s autocratic ruminations.
Asked by TV host Bill Maher what would happen if Trump told American
soldiers to kill the families of terrorists, as he has promised to do,
Hayden replied, “If he were to order that once in government, the
American armed forces would refuse to act.”

“You are required not
to follow an unlawful order,” Hayden added. “That would be in violation
of all the international laws of armed conflict.”

May I have a word with those of you Bernie supporters who consider Donald Trump to be no worse than Hillary Clinton?

You’re dead wrong.

As
I said when I endorsed Bernie for president, I view Hillary as
enormously qualified to be president of the political system we now
have. She is smart, capable, and experienced. I endorsed Bernie because I
thought he would help create the political system we need. But Bernie
will not be the Democratic nominee.

This does not mean the end of
the movement Bernie advanced. That movement was never about Bernie; it
was about reclaiming our democracy and our economy. And that movement
will live on, and it will grow. It needs your continuing activism and
your tenacity.

You are, of course, entitled to support anyone you
wish to. But if you don’t get behind Hillary you increase the odds that
Donald Trump will be president.

That would be a disaster for
America and the world. Trump is a menace. He is not just unsuited to
being the president of the United States – a bigoted narcissist who
incites and excuses violence – but his presidency would threaten
everything this nation stands for: tolerance, inclusion, freedom of the
press, equal justice, and equal opportunity.

A Trump presidency would make it far more difficult ever to achieve the progressive goals you and I share.

A
prominent African-American Zionist used social media to ‏blast a campus
group for drawing parallels between racial violence in this country and
the occupation of Palestinian lands by the Israeli military.

“I’m
just like, wait a minute SJP. Let’s be real,” Chloé Simone Valdary said
in the brief video, posted on both her Facebook and Twitter feeds on
July 12. “The majority of people in your organization are Arabs. Let’s
be real. Today Arabs still engaged in the African slave trade. I’m just
putting it out there.”

“You want to exploit my people’s history?”
Valdary said. “You want to exploit Jewish people’s history and twist and
turn it to use towards your political gains?”

“Don’t act like you have solidarity with my people,” Valdery said, adding: “You need to stay in your lane.”

In
recent years pro-Israel groups like the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee have intensified outreach to non-Jewish and African American
communities, in an effort to built a wider base of support. Valdery has
collaborated with both AIPAC and the Zionist Organization of America. In
2014, Tablet Magazine heralded Valdary as an “African American
firebrand” who “wants to ignite a Zionist renaissance.”

The Arab
slave trade across the Sahara is among the oldest slave trades in
history. Forms of slavery continue today in countries like Mauritania
and Sudan; in Sudan, for example, following the 1983 civil war large
numbers of ethnic Dinka, Nuer and Nuba were captured, enslaved or
exploited in other ways by Afro-Arabs from the north.

Valdary also mentioned Hamas and an Ethiopian Israeli who has been held hostage by the Palestinian political group for two years.

“Legitimately,
there are Ethiopian Israelis in Gaza today that are still held by
Hamas. Where you at, fam? You going to talk about that? That doesn’t
really fit into your narrative?” Valdary said.

Monday, July 18, 2016

From The Los Angeles Times:http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-pakistan-model-20160716-snap-story.htmlBy Associated PressJuly 16, 2016Pakistani
fashion model Qandeel Baloch, who recently stirred controversy by
posting pictures of herself with a Muslim cleric on social media, was
strangled by her brother, police said Saturday. Her parents told
police one of her six brothers strangled her as she slept in the
family's home in Multan, police spokeswoman Nabila Ghazanfar told the
Associated Press. She said police are searching for the suspect.

Baloch,
whose real name was Fauzia Azeem, was little-known until recently, when
she offended many conservatives by posting pictures of herself with
Mufti Qavi, a prominent cleric. She said they enjoyed soft drinks and
cigarettes during the daylight hours in the holy month of Ramadan, when
practicing Muslims fast from dawn to dusk.

The pictures and
allegations caused a scandal in conservative Pakistan, and the
government removed Qavi from the official moon-sighting committee that
determines when Ramadan starts and ends in accordance with the Islamic
lunar calendar.

Baloch had said Qavi told her he wanted to see
her face before the committee met to determine the Eid al-Fitr holiday
marking the end of Ramadan, which was observed earlier this month.

Qavi denied the allegations, saying he met with her only to discuss the teachings of Islam.Earlier this month, Baloch sought protection from the government, saying she was receiving anonymous death threats.

Hundreds
of Pakistani women are killed by family members each year in so-called
honor killings, which are seen as punishment for violating conservative
norms.

Protesting
a police killing and marching in support of a man convicted of rape can
pose a real dilemma when one in five women nationwide has suffered a
sexual assault.

The
circumstance was all too familiar: public outrage concentrated on yet
another Black victim killed by a bullet from a police officer’s gun.

“Whose life matters? Che’s life matters!” Hundreds of voices roared in unison along Seattle’s Fifth Avenue that February day.

Marchers
thundered through downtown Seattle, protesting the killing, just days
before, of 47-year-old Che Taylor. Two Seattle police officers had
fatally shot Taylor after claiming he stood beside a car and reached for what they thought was a holstered gun.

However, some voices were absent from the chorus decrying Taylor’s killing. Some used their voices to denounce Taylor instead.

For
some female organizers, that alone was enough to not only boycott the
Taylor march but also to mount their own mini-protest against him,
holding signs denouncing rapists outside a separate community meeting
focused on his death.

Na’Quel Walker,
a Seattle-based organizer, summarized in a public Facebook post what
many who withheld their support for Taylor were thinking. She didn’t
justify his death, nor did she justify his criminal history, but she did
defend his family. “His family DOES deserve justice,” the post read.

Walker’s
words highlighted dueling strands of thought within Seattle’s Black
Lives Matter movement between those who believe Black solidarity should
trump someone’s past sexual transgressions and those who believe those
transgressions can never be overshadowed for the sake of that
solidarity.The divide has played out nationally, as some women in
the movement have been faced with the difficult task of choosing either
Blackness or womanhood when they're asked to support justice for a
Black male killed by police who was once accused or convicted of sexual
assault.

Monday, July 4, 2016

About Me

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Thomas Jefferson